Tricentennial turns it around in time for Commemorative Week

San Antonio Assistant City Manager Carlos Contreras (left, foreground) and San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg (right, foreground) coordinate before making an announcement at Market Square about the Tricentennial Commemorative Week lineup of events.

San Antonio Assistant City Manager Carlos Contreras (left,...

Redemption is sweet.

Months after the city’s yearlong Tricentennial celebration seemed poised for disaster, city officials are reassessing a previously troubled state of affairs. And reviews of the reboot are glowing, even from its most intense critic: Councilman Greg Brockhouse.

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“It is a total reversal,” Brockhouse said Monday, as the city prepared to dive into Commemorative Week, the centerpiece of San Antonio’s celebration of its 300th anniversary.

In November, weeks before the celebration had even begun, Brockhouse declared Tricentennial an “absolute disaster,” citing mismanaged contracts and extravagant spending under Edward Benavides, who resigned as CEO of the undertaking that same month.

Shortly afterward, City Manager Sheryl Sculley appointed Assistant City Manager Carlos Contreras to lead the foundering commission, and Mayor Ron Nirenberg scrambled its executive committee, nominating Cynthia Teniente-Matson, president of Texas A&M University-San Antonio, as its chair.

Ever since, Contreras has received wide praise for reining in excesses and restoring professionalism to planning efforts.

“I would tell you that I think Carlos has done a tremendous job,” Brockhouse said. “I think he brought something real steady to it. No ego about it. I think he’s done a helluva job.”

The councilman cited a decision by the Tricentennial Commission’s board to cap monthly payments to its marketing firm, KGBTexas, as an example of a return to fiscal sanity after Contreras took over.

Contreras himself noted another example: the Tricentennial Founders’ Day Gala.

Slated for Thursday at the Convention Center, the event originally was envisioned as a glitzy ball costing nearly $1 million. Under Contreras, the commission cut its budget to under $500,000, and the event was transformed into a gala that will raise funds for a “legacy gift” to the city to help welcome visitors to the city’s five World Heritage missions.

Contreras applied that same standard of efficiency to Tricentennial as a whole.

“We cut a lot of budget while still delivering quality programming,” he told me, quite dryly.

That’s a major shift in attitude from the Benavides era, in which Tricentennial staff almost dropped $1 million to secure Shakira for its kickoff event on New Year’s Eve. (Benavides ultimately opted for the cheese-rock of REO Speedwagon at a cost of $232,500.)

By contrast, Contreras eschewed such flashiness for a more workmanlike approach — a reflection, incidentally, of San Antonio itself, a working-class town. Contreras said he approached his unexpected appointment by acknowledging that “things I can’t change have occurred, focusing on things I could change.”

“Carlos and Cynthia in particular brought the level of professional rigor to those positions that was required at this late stage in the game,” Nirenberg said, “particularly to give confidence to people on the outside looking in that, whether it was contracts or event management or oversight, that the Tricentennial was being administered in a professional manner.”

The troubles that preceded the reboot can mostly be traced to breakdowns in communication, he added.

“I think it was a result of us not clearly articulating what the purpose of a Tricentennial in San Antonio should be,” Nirenberg said. “Is this a Fiesta again, or are we just going to be running a marketing campaign? What’s the point? I don’t think people understood there was a point to Tricentennial and how important that milestone could and should be for the city.”